When he came back into the room, Kylie lay on the bench underneath a sheet; the plastic ring that encircled the bench hummed and sparkled down near her feet, then switched off. It looked like Kylie had passed out. Several holographic overlays of her body hung suspended in the air against a white wall. Khalid moved a sensing-pen over a tablet near his computer, shifting and sorting the overlays. Screeds of data and chemical compounds flitted next to the schematics. Jimbo’s jaw dropped.
“Where’d ya get this stuff? It’s like in the movies.”
Khalid indicated for the nurse to take Jimbo’s specimen and continued examining the data. “Standard stuff, Mr White. In fact, it’s close to obsolete which is why the government allowed me to use it here.”
He motioned for Jimbo to take a seat. Kylie groaned on the bench, her legs twitching momentarily, before falling still again.
“From what I understand,” said Khalid, “Kylie was not a willing participant in your marriage.”
Jimbo bristled. Fucken A-rab cunt! Who the hell does he think he is? He tried to keep it from his voice. “I paid for her, fair and square. It’s the way we do things around here. You A-rabs do the same thing.”
“It’s not quite the same, we have family consent. Your customs are a little more, how shall we say, extreme than ours.”
“What are you saying, doc?” Jimbo felt the anger rising in his throat and fought to contain it. He consciously unclenched his fists.
“Look, Mr White, I don’t care either way, I’m not judging you, just trying to establish the facts. I don’t think you’re going to like what I’ve found here.”
The blood drained from Jimbo’s face, though at the same time a piece of him rejoiced. It’s not me, it’s her. “Yeah, well, you know then, don’t you. Bought and paid for. City job, Cartel approved and all that. So what the fuck have you found?”
Khalid brought an overlay to the fore, a detailed internal scan of Kylie’s skull. “This, for one.” He zoomed in an area and highlighted it. A small rectangle, tiny, no bigger than his the nail on Jimbo’s little finger.
“She’s been wired.” Jimbo’s voice sounded too high in his own ears, the voice of a child alone at a birthday party, excluded from the games.
“Certain organizations use them to facilitate communication, enhance certain skill sets, you probab -”
“The Cartel.”
“Not just the Cartel. It can also be used to suppress or supplant memories in their hosts. Bio and wetware tech is taught in high schools in the City, Mr White. Kids can play with it on their pets. And someone has done an even worse job on your wife than an eight-year-old child on their favourite kitten.”
Jimbo sat stunned. A bubble of white froth dissolved slowly in the corner of Kylie’s mouth. “She’s not an epileptic.”
“Not at all.” Khalid added another overlay to the schematic, highlighting a tangle of synapses weaving through the lobes in the brain. “You can clearly see here that the synaptic circuit is thin and branches off to the right. See how it appears to spark then fades, dies out if you like?”
Jimbo couldn’t, but nodded.
Khalid continued. “I recorded this activity when I asked her about her past. She couldn’t answer me and went into a seizure.”
“Yeah.” Jimbo suddenly knew where this was going. “It’s a kill-switch. That chip is causing all this shit to happen. That’s why she can’t have babies. You could take the chip out, then you -”
Khalid shook his head, his face grim. “That’s not why.” The head schematics were replaced by an overlay of Kylie’s reproductive organs. “She has no ovaries. No fallopian tubes. Kylie has female genitalia, she has what you might call a ‘fuck-hole’, Mr White, but not much more.”
“How ... how can ...”
“I also performed DNA testing and blood analysis. This is where it gets disturbing.” He indicated the screeds of data and formulae. “Are you ready for this, Mr White?”
Jimbo felt sick. He glanced at Kylie again, prone on the bench. “She’s not gunna die, is she?”
“No, but she probably wants to.” Khalid indicated a rash of numbers. “Two distinct sets of DNA were found.”
“What? That can’t happen, can it?”
“Organ transplants, Mr White. Kylie’s genitals have a different set of DNA to the rest of her body. What there is of her reproductive system is not her own.”
Bile rose in Jimbo’s throat. His head felt light, held on by a string, ready to float away and pop.
“Blood analysis shows the presence of rejection drugs to verify this. I don’t suppose you’re giving her these, Mr White? No? I didn’t think so. I suspect we’ll find slow-release isotopes somewhere in her body administering the drug. Are you okay?”
Jimbo tried to nod. Kylie groaned again, her eyes fluttering. Soon she’d wake. “I’m fine,” he croaked. The bile had risen to the base of his throat, hot and acidic. A thin sheen of sweat had broken on his forehead.
“But that’s not all the blood shows.” Khalid kept his face solemn, but his eyes shone. “Traces of testosterone blockers were also found, and large doses of the estrone form of estrogen. Do you know what estrone does, Mr White? No? It slows the growth of body hair, softens skin, tends to make one feel more gentle, graceful. Even feminine.”
“Yer fucken lying ...”
Sobs came from the bench where Kylie lay, awake now and listening. Tears pooled in her eyes, ready to drop.
Another head schematic appeared, focusing on the throat. “There is considerable scar tissue around the larynx.” Highlights flared on the hologram. “You can see it here and here, but the work is surprisingly neat. Unlike the wiring of the brain.”
“Yer fucken lying, A-rab ...” Jimbo swallowed hard on the bile.
“There are other anatomical tests I can perform if you need further proof, Mr White. Due to poor selective breeding decisions over the last century, women are in rather short supply and the demand is great. I suspect we might find it interesting to test the age of Kylie’s genitals. I’m quite sure it will be much, much older than you and I would expect in a woman of Kylie’s age.”
“I’ll fucken kill ya for this.” Jimbo tried to rise but his legs felt like jelly and, like everything else, betrayed him. Instead, he threw up into his lap and began to cry.
“Help me,” Kylie managed to gasp. “Please.”
“What impact does the bias towards having only male children in a one-child society have on this world, Mr White? Inshallah, my friend, inshallah.” A white towel landed in Jimbo’s lap. “Now clean yourself up. Act like a man. I need to help your wife.”
~ * ~
Dark clouds rolled in from the west to fill the sky and the temperature dropped to below twenty. The town felt the water in the air, desperate to escape and pour down on the earth below. Wooden buildings ached, their joints on the verge of swelling, timber groaning in anticipation of the storm. The air, shall we say, was pregnant with possibility, and Jimbo, not usually one for omens, decided the rain gods were in his favour.
There would be no better time to take his wife through the plan for the coming months, and if the prospect of rain did not alleviate the pain in the heart of his household, then he was doomed.
At first, his mother took it worse than Kylie did. Mel stood there, her face drawn and aghast, staring at the five different sized cushions laid out on the kitchen table. Next to each cushion, a sign labelled with a number and a month name. Kylie sat there, resting her ankle, a nonplussed look plastered over her face. Her fingers roamed incessantly over the thin line of scab gracing the side of her skull where the chip had been removed.
“James. No.” Mel’s voice sounded like dust working through a cracked windpipe. She shook her head slowly from side to side. “This is not the way, not at all.”
“It’s the only way, Mum.”
She stared at him with hollowed out eyes. Time had fallen hard on her since the Old Man had died. She looked ancient, a crone. “You have to stop this, J
ames. Can’t you see what this is doing to you? To us?” Her bone-thin arms trembled, a long wavering stick of a finger pointing towards his face.
“This is what we are going to do. No one will know.”
“Where is my son?” Spittle flew from her mouth, spattering his face. “What have you done with my son?”
And then Kylie recognized the significance of the cushions, the progression of the months, the pregnancy. She leapt from the seat, screaming, flailing with her arms to knock the cushions away. Her hobbled ankle buckled and she fell awkwardly, clawing at the table for support. The table upended, spilling the cushions across the peeling linoleum floor and still Kylie screamed.
“Shut up!” Jimbo pushed the table away.
Kylie dragged herself onto all fours, her head held low, hair hanging loose and bedraggled. She began to keen, a broken high-pitched sound like a piece of machinery about to burn itself out. She - it - repulsed him. Whenever he looked at her he wanted to tear her apart. Ten fucken grand! He needed to kill that horrible sound, put the boot in.
“Get away from her, James!” Mel grabbed him by the arm, pulling him off balance. “You’ve done enough damage.”
Jimbo backhanded her, hard across the face. Mel’s head rocked back, a whoosh of dead air expulsed from her lungs.
“You get out of this house now.” Mel’s voice was stone. Her eyes watered. A red welt rose over her cheek.
Kylie crawled from the kitchen into the lounge, the keening hitching on and off in her throat. Blood seeped at the bandages wrapped around her ankle.
Jimbo stared down his mother. “No.” He raised his hand again and Mel backed away.
“Then we’re leaving.”
“Ya not fucken going anywhere. Neither of yers. Go into the lounge and shut that freak up. I’ve got a phone call to make.”
“You can’t stop us!”
“The Freak can’t even walk, Mum. Whatya gunna do? Carry the fucken thing?”
He righted the table, took the phone from the bench, and pulled up a chair. Mel hissed her exasperation, then followed Kylie into the lounge.
The phone felt heavy in his hand, worse this time round. Everything had gone wrong, but this time, this one time, it might just work out. He began to dial the number Keats had given him, every digit burned into his memory. He’d been able to think of nothing else for the past fortnight, events, circumstances unfolding, hatching in his mind late at night when the night owls prowled.
He was so caught up in his actions he almost didn’t hear her until it was too late.
“I couldn’t do this before!” Kylie, behind him, her voice hysterical.
Jimbo swivelled in the chair. His father’s knife shining in the kitchen light, gripped tight in her hand, arced down, slicing his arm from shoulder to elbow. Blood sprayed across the room. He screamed, the pain shooting white behind his eyes.
She raised the knife high above her head. “But I can do anything I want now!”
As she brought it down, Jimbo lashed out with his foot, kicking her in the side of the knee with a crunch. Kylie collapsed, the knife striking sparks on the metal rim of the table. She hit the floor, the knife spinning harmlessly from her hand. As she tried to get to her knees, Jimbo kicked her in the stomach, sending her sprawling onto her back. She looked up at him, hate burning in her eyes. He kicked her again and she doubled over, wheezing, unable to breathe.
“That’s right, bitch. You can do whatever you want.” He lifted his foot over her bloodied ankle, ready to smash it.
“Get away from her, James, or I’ll shoot.” Mel stood in the doorway. She pointed the .303 rifle at his chest. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“You wouldn’t.” Jimbo stepped away from Kylie, towards his mother. The wrinkles in her face appeared set in concrete, and the look in her eyes gave him doubt.
“You wanna bet, James?” She motioned him away with barrel, as she tried to get closer to Kylie. “You okay, hon? Can you get up?”
“Yeah, I wanna make bet!” He charged her. Mel swung the barrel towards his head and pulled the trigger. The chamber sounded an empty click. Jimbo hit her in the chest with a footy tackle. They crashed into the wall. Mel dropped the gun, holding her hands up to shield her head as Jimbo brought his fist down into her face. Her jaw cracked and her eyes rolled back into her head as she passed out.
Kylie was trying to crawl from the kitchen, dragging herself through the blood and the cushions. Her breathing was ragged. Jimbo smashed his foot down onto her ankle. Her scream was brief, then she collapsed unconscious.
He stood there for a second, his chest heaving. Blood had soaked his shirt and dripped in a steady stream down his arm, falling from his fingertips to the lino. He picked up the rifle and the knife, and put them next to the phone on the table. Then he wrapped an old tea towel showing a faded giant pineapple around his triceps, pulling it tight to staunch the flow of blood. He picked up the phone and stared at the dial.
Outside a breeze had picked up, shaking the leaves in the trees and rattling the shutters on the windows. The slow rumble of distant thunder broke the relative silence. It was going to rain.
He dialled the number Keats had given him and waited. Kylie was already starting to stir. She’s a tough bitch, I’ll give her that. Childbirth can be a killer though.
The phone answered on the seventh ring. A woman’s voice.
“Uh ... I ... want to adopt a ...” Jimbo stammered. That voice, he knew that voice. The world tilted on its axis, sending mountains tumbling towards him.
“Hello? Who is this?” said the woman.
Jimbo sat in silence, watching Kylie roll onto her stomach.
“Hello? I’m going to hang up if -”
“No, I’m here.” He hadn’t heard that voice for so long. It had sung to him in his dreams instead. Cities crumbled in his head, landscapes built on teetering dreams suddenly blackened and burned, the ash swept up into hot, confusing winds. And everything became so cold and suddenly clear. “Niki?”
The phone went quiet, except for the buzz of the line. Then, “Jimmy? Is this you?”
His chest ached, so tight it felt like the skin would split. Tears spilled from his eyes. “Niki, Niki. I thought you’d been kidnapped, married off ... maybe dead. I thought -”
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“There’s so much I need to tell you, Niki, so much I need to say.” The barriers were collapsing inside him, the hard-man walls crumbling down. He couldn’t stop now, he had to let it out. “I need to tell you how I feel. I need -”
“Jimmy? My supervisor is taking over this call. Can you hear me? My supervisor -”
“- that I -”
The line clicked and another voice came on, still female, but huskier. “Hello, my name is Ju. I’ll be -”
“- love you.”
“- taking over this call,” Ju continued. “I believe you’re wanting to adopt a baby. With whom am I speaking?”
Jimbo sat there, the phone pressed to his ear, listening to his breath echo in the receiver. His mother slumped against the wall, blood still leaking from her nose. Kylie had managed to make it to the doorway, and was using it to help pull herself through into the lounge. The smell of ozone drifted in through the open window, as another peal of thunder shook the sky.
“It’s White. James White. I want to adopt a baby boy.”
After he had made the arrangements, he called Dave and told him they needed a doctor, but to keep Khalid out of it. He grabbed a beer from the fridge, stepped over his mother’s prone legs and followed the trail of blood through the lounge to the front door. Kylie couldn’t reach the door handle and lay on her stomach sobbing. He opened the door, stepped over her and walked out onto his verandah. Lightning forked the sky over on the horizon and the clouds swum overhead, pushed and harried by the winds. He sat down in the Old Man’s recliner, popped the top of the beer and took a swig. Jimbo grimaced, took another gulp, let it cool the burn in his gut. He felt light-headed. He hoped D
ave got here soon, maybe he’d lost a little too much blood.
He put his feet up, let his eyes close for a second, just a second, and waited for the rains.
* * * *
Paul Haines was born in 1970 in Thames, New Zealand. He was raised in South Auckland, studied at Otago University and moved to Australia in 1996. He published his first short story in 2001 and has since won the Aurealis, Ditmar, Sir Julius Vogel and the Chronos Awards for his writing. He is the author of the collections Doorways For The Dispossessed (2006), Slice of Life (2009) and The Last Days of Kali Yuga (2010).
“Wives” made the honour-list for the James Tiptree Junior award, the Locus Recommended Reading List, has been nominated for the Ditmar, Australian Shadows and Sir Julius Vogel, and won the Aurealis award. The story was inspired by a recent trip to China.
The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05 Page 27